Putin scraps Kremlin news agencies in abrupt overhaul

Moscow: President Vladimir Putin has unexpectedly revamped Russian state-controlled print and radio news media, abolishing the RIA Novosti wire service and naming an outspoken television presenter to lead its successor.

Dmitry Kiselyov, a deputy director of Russia's state television and radio holding VGTRK and a host of a weekly news program on the Rossiya 1 television channel, will head the newly formed agency, called Rossiya Segodnya or Russia Today, according to a document signed by Mr Putin and published on the Kremlin's website Monday.

"Today attitudes in the world toward Russia aren't fair," Mr Kiselyov said in televised remarks. "Restoring a fair attitude toward Russia" is the goal of the new agency, he said.

Mr Putin's decision to eliminate the news agency founded days after Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 clears the deck for Mr Kiselyov, Mr Putin's vocal backer who has drawn criticism for comments about gays and Ukrainian anti-government protests. The consolidation in the industry follows billionaire Vladimir Potanin's sale of his media business last month to an Gazprombank-backed group.

Mr Putin has been criticised for rolling back press freedoms by working to centralise power and increase state ownership of mass media and the country's biggest companies. Russia was ranked 148th among 179 countries in a 2013 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, a monitoring group based in Paris.

"There's been a consolidation in the media that's involved in outwardly directed propaganda," Boris Makarenko, deputy director of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, said. "The holding's new boss wasn't an accidental choice. They've taken a person with the ethos of a Soviet-era propagandist, not a journalist."

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Mr Kiselyov drew the ire of Ukrainian protesters for his coverage of anti-government demonstrations in Kiev, which confused the chronology of events that culminated in demonstrators being beaten by Berkut special police. He's also spoken out in favour of a ban on gays donating blood or organs.

Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment. The government will have a working meeting to discuss the implementation of Mr Putin's order, said Natalya Timakova, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The primary purpose of the new agency will be "to provide information on Russian state policy and Russian life and society for audiences abroad," according to the decree.

A protester in Kiev Sunday interrupted a broadcast by television broadcaster Rossiya 24, part of the network that employs Mr Kiselyov, to hand the correspondent a statue in the shape of an Oscar. The man asked the reporter to deliver it to Kiselyov for his "lies and drivel" about the mass rallies gripping the former Soviet republic.

Mr Putin decided to create the news agency to ensure "more rational use" of budget funds spent on the media, as well as to "improve the effectiveness of state news media," said Sergei Ivanov, head of the presidential administration, the Interfax new service reported.

"Russia conducts an independent policy and firmly defends its national interests," Mr Ivanov was cited as saying. "That's not easy to explain to the world, but it can and must be done."

The new agency will also include the Voice of Russia radio station, according to the order. Its relationship to RT, the state-run television station previously known as Russia Today, wasn't clear from the order.

Federal budget spending on RIA Novosti rose to as much as 3.18 billion rubles ($107 million) in 2011, from 1.07 billion rubles in 2008, the Kommersant newspaper reported on its website. The budget's outlays this year equalled 2.97 billion rubles.